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Smart cities use technology to improve the lives of their citizens. There are applications in health care, education and governance that are already enhancing the way the City does business.
IMAGINE living in a place where you no longer have to sit in traffic to get to work or take your children to school or even go to meetings; by 2040, we will hopefully be living in that place in Johannesburg.
 In closing the last week of the GDS2040 outreach programme, which focused on smart cities, the acting chief information officer in the City of Johannesburg, Abraham Mahlangu, revealed this as his vision. The event took place on 30 September at Turbine Hall in Newtown.
“Technology alone won’t make the City of Johannesburg a smart city,” he said, “although it is a mighty enabler.”
Sessions that were held throughout the week yielded inputs from City officials, experts and residents on solutions to challenges, as well as enhancing programmes that are already in place so that they can better serve the city’s residents.
The first session, on 26 September, examined the implementation of technology to improve service provision and delivery and maximise public safety. Because of the nature of the challenges confronting Joburg, Executive Mayor Parks Tau felt that the solutions put forward throughout the smart cities week should focus on improving all aspects of residents’ quality of life.
“It cannot be smart cities for vanity’s sake,” he said. “When we talk about solutions, they should be developmental and must respond to developmental challenges such as poverty and disease.”
Acting chief information officer in the City, Abraham Mahlangu, felt that if Joburg wanted to be a smart city, there was a need for the municipality to move with the changes and take its residents along too.
Broadband
One way of doing this was through implementation of the City’s broadband project, which was still on the cards, and would serve as a way of making Joburg “smart” by delivering centralised information and communications technology, said Mahlangu.
Another project, which will carry Joburg forward as a smart city, is the Public Access to Internet in Libraries (Pail) programme. It has been in place since 2006, and serves as a way of empowering the city’s poorer citizens.
 MMC for Finance Geoffrey Makhubo (Photo: Enoch Lehung, City of Johannesburg)“It was introduced to empower the poor politically through meaningful participatory governance and enabling them to feel part of the City, to support the egovernment initiative of multi-purpose community centres, and to facilitate the operations of the City,” said the director of library and information services, Nobuntu Mpendulo, on day two of smart cities week.
For the City, it provides a vehicle to realise the smart city concept and facilitate egovernance, as well as provides a platform to administer service-oriented projects, among others.
Technology can also play a key role in improving healthcare, which came up for discussion on 28 September. There are already initiatives in place such as Health TV in clinics and using SMSes and emails to track patients with chronic diseases and HIV/Aids.
The broad use of health information technology would contribute massively to a healthier Joburg in the future, said the member of the mayoral committee for health and social services, Nonceba Molwele, because it would decrease costs, as well as the amount of paperwork that needed to be filled out.
Zakes Mnisi from Bwired spoke about how the broadband project could contribute to better health: “Broadband benefits individuals, enterprises and governments and can connect emergency rooms in rural areas with specialist doctors.
“It can provide health care to all everywhere, if you put it in clinics,” he said. Patients would be able to access all of their records online, and it would also mean that the elderly and disabled would be able to receive health care.
Health TV
The portfolio head for finance, Geoffrey Makhubo, said that initiatives such as Pail and Health TV were laying the foundation of a Joburg that was smart. This would include using technology such as smart metering, utilities and investment.
“We have to be smart to continue to attract investment, and we cannot be smart in isolation,” he said.
 Acting CIO in the City Abraham Mahlangu: Technology alone wont make the Joburg a smart cityResidents were pinpointed as being part of the solution too, and Kabelo Makwane from Microsoft suggested ways that they could get involved. This included residents taking photographs of potholes that they see and sending these directly to the government agency responsible, rather than having to phone the call centre and losing time by logging a query and waiting for a response.
Other solutions put forward during the week included a need to improve communications and form networks with experts who had already overcome these challenges, in order to learn from them. “We will form clusters and enabling bodies that will allow us to be part of global initiatives,” said Mahlangu at the final session on 30 September.
Also important is the need to enable the youth, said the member of the mayoral committee for corporate and shared services, Mally Mokoena. “We need to unlock the potential of youth in IT, as it is the City’s intention to see young people advancing.”
Ultimately, it was a necessity that the City employed technology moving into the future. “Without technology, we will go nowhere because we need it to follow global trends,” Mokoena said at the final session.
Although the themed weeks have reached their end, the consultative process of the GDS is not over yet. Tau will welcome guests from all over the world to add their input at the international conference at Turbine Hall in Newtown on 4 October, ahead of the GDS stakeholder summit on 5 October at the Orlando Community Centre in Mooki Street in Orlando West, Soweto.
The final GDS document, which will include suggestions and comments made by residents and experts during the consultative process, will be launched on 20 October.
For more information on suggestions and solutions that have emerged out of the themed weeks, visit the GDS2040 Facebook page, or follow @GDS2040 on Twitter. The GDS also has a website.
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